Not the greatest shot in the world...but I was out shooting blue jays in my front yard when suddenly a dark shadow descended and snatched one of the blue jays straight out of the air - I barely had time to get the camera whipped over there to snap a blurry shot of the kill from the juvenile hawk:

Here's a gruesome sequence - hey, it's nature in action! I caught a biiiig gator sliding up on shore out of the murky swamp to nab a large softshell turtle, and chomp his way through his meal:

Meanwhile, here was an unexplainable truce...or a really suicidal turtle that caught this gator so off guard that he was too stunned to attack. Maybe the turtle had been dared by his buddies to do something really stupid? Whatever the mystery, the turtle had some serious marbles, and at least that afternoon, made it through without becoming lunch:

This past weekend, it was very cold here for Florida, with daytime highs in the 50s...this makes the reptiles very unhappy, as they are cold blooded, and need to stay warm. The alligators get extremely slow and lethargic in the cold, and end up laying around up on land to get as much sun as possible...they usually don't have the energy to do much more than hiss at you if you get close. Being out of the water, it makes them easier to photograph! So here's a few gators from this past weekend:

dont know much about gaters and how close you can get to them and still be somewhat safe.. or the gear you have zack and how close you can get with your lenses... looking at your pics it would be cool to see some extreme closeups of the skin... the patterns and scales would make for some cool skin pattern shots then again that is probably a bad idea as I dont think getting close to a mouth or tail that size is a smart idea